Alina Habba’s sneaky reappointment as acting U.S. attorney in New Jersey violates the law, says a criminal defendant, who wants his case thrown out as a result.View this email in your browser [link removed]
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****JULY 29, 2025****
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**Trump appointment maneuver risks thousands of criminal cases**
**Alina Habba’s sneaky reappointment as acting U.S. attorney in New Jersey violates the law, says a criminal defendant, who wants his case thrown out as a result.**
In the fight to preserve American democracy from Trumpian authoritarianism, a New Jersey defendant accused of drug and gun crimes named Julien Giraud Jr. could become the unlikeliest of heroes.
Alina Habba is Trump’s former personal lawyer and a MAGA influencer, who was installed as interim U.S. attorney for New Jersey about four months ago, despite no prosecutorial experience. She immediately politicized the office, opening investigations into the sitting governor and attorney general and charging Rep. LaMonica McIver (D-NJ) with assault for an incident at a Newark ICE detention facility. She has said in interviews that her role as a federal prosecutor would be to help “turn New Jersey red.”
But Habba had a problem: The Federal Vacancies Reform Act (FVRA) only gave her a 120-day window to perform the duties of the office in an interim capacity. Though Habba was **nominated on July 1 to serve** [link removed] permanently as U.S. attorney, New Jersey’s senators have thus far blocked her from consideration. As last Friday’s deadline approached, Habba petitioned a three-judge panel to allow her to stay in the position. But the judges used their authority under the vacancy laws to reject that request and instead appointed Desiree Leigh Grace, the first assistant U.S. attorney.
The administration then maneuvered to keep Habba in the job. The law prevents someone from being an acting U.S. attorney and nominated for the post at the same time. But Habba resigned as interim U.S. attorney, and Trump withdrew her nomination for the post. Then, Attorney General Pam Bondi **fired Grace** [link removed] and hired Habba as first assistant U.S. attorney in her place. Therefore, under the vacancy rules, Habba could become the acting U.S. attorney in New Jersey for another 210 days.
That’s where Julien Giraud Jr. comes in. He had a criminal trial set in New Jersey for August 4 on federal gun and drug charges. But his attorney, Thomas Mirigliano, **filed a motion** [link removed] seeking to dismiss the charges on the grounds that Habba isn’t the real U.S. attorney.
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“Ms. Habba’s re-appointment directly violates the FVRA, which explicitly prohibits individuals whose nominations have been submitted to the Senate from serving in an acting capacity for the same office, regardless of subsequent withdrawal of the nomination,” Mirigliano wrote in the filing. If Habba’s reappointment is invalid, the attorney reasoned, then any decisions made by her office constitute an “unconstitutional executive usurpation of judicial authority” and are “without legal effect.”
The case is now in the hands of a judge in Pennsylvania. Obviously, if one defendant succeeds in getting his federal case thrown out in New Jersey, every subsequent defendant will try the same tactic. While the courts might ultimately rule that **prosecutorial authority is not diminished** [link removed] by breaking the vacancy rules, at the very least thousands of cases could screech to a halt for months.
And if the courts rule in favor of letting Mr. Giraud go, putting an alleged drug and gun trafficker back on the street because Trump wanted to do a favor for his personal lawyer, it could force a grudging rollback of this aspect of manipulating the system to reward friends.
Many have been waiting to see who would fight back against Trump’s corruption of the system. It took a defendant with nothing to lose to actually give it a shot.
**~ David Dayen**
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